Elevation in Response to Entertainment Portrayals of Moral Virtue

Media psychologists have long puzzled over how individuals can experience enjoyment from entertainment such as tragedies that often elicit profound feelings of sadness. The present research examines the idea that a focus on “meaningful” entertainment and affective responses identified as “elevation” may provide a framework for understanding many examples of sad or dramatic entertainment. The results of this study suggest that many types of meaningful cinematic entertainment feature portrayals of moral virtues (e.g., altruism). These portrayals, in turn, elicit feelings of elevation (e.g., inspiration) that are signified in terms of mixed affect and unique physical responses (e.g., lump in throat). Ultimately, elevation also gives rise to motivations to embody moral virtues, such as being a better person or helping others.     

Shindigs,brunches, and rodeos: The neural basis of event words

Events (e.g., “running” or “eating”) constitute a basic type within human cognition and human language. We asked whether thinking about events, as compared to other conceptual categories, depends on partially independent neural circuits. Indirect evidence for this hypothesis comes from previous studies showing elevated posterior temporal responses to verbs, which typically label events. Neural responses to verbs could, however, be driven either by their grammatical or by their semantic properties. In the present experiment, we separated the effects of grammatical class (verb vs. noun) and semantic category (event vs. object) by measuring neural responses to event nouns (e.g., “the hurricane”). Participants rated the semantic relatedness of event nouns, as well as of two categories of object nouns—animals (e.g., “the alligator”) and plants (e.g., “the acorn”)—and three categories of verbs—manner of motion (e.g., “to roll”), emission (e.g., “to sparkle”), and perception (e.g., “to gaze”). As has previously been observed, we found larger responses to verbs than to object nouns in the left posterior middle (LMTG) and superior (LSTG) temporal gyri. Crucially, we also found that the LMTG responds more to event than to object nouns. These data suggest that part of the posterior lateral temporal response to verbs is driven by their semantic properties. By contrast, a more superior region, at the junction of the temporal and parietal cortices, responded more to verbs than to all nouns, irrespective of their semantic category. We concluded that the neural mechanisms engaged when thinking about event and object categories are partially dissociable.     

A Comparison of Modalities in Modeling

Organizational display rules (e.g., “service with a smile”) have had mixed relationships with employee emotional labor—either in the form of “bad faith” surface acting (suppressing or faking expressions) or “good faith” deep acting (modifying inner feelings). We draw on the motivational perspective of emotional labor to argue that individual differences in customer orientation will directly and indirectly relate to these acting strategies in response to display rules. With a survey of more than 500 working adults in customer contact positions, and controlling for affective disposition, we find that customer orientation directly increases “good faith” acting while it moderates the relationship of display rules with “bad faith” acting.     

Functional connectivity dynamics during film viewing reveal common networks for different emotional experiences

Recent theoretical and empirical work has highlighted the role of domain-general, large-scale brain networks in generating emotional experiences. These networks are hypothesized to process aspects of emotional experiences that are not unique to a specific emotional category (e.g., “sadness,” “happiness”), but rather that generalize across categories. In this article, we examined the dynamic interactions (i.e., changing cohesiveness) between specific domain-general networks across time while participants experienced various instances of sadness, fear, and anger. We used a novel method for probing the network connectivity dynamics between two salience networks and three amygdala-based networks. We hypothesized, and found, that the functional connectivity between these networks covaried with the intensity of different emotional experiences. Stronger connectivity between the dorsal salience network and the medial amygdala network was associated with more intense ratings of emotional experience across six different instances of the three emotion categories examined. Also, stronger connectivity between the dorsal salience network and the ventrolateral amygdala network was associated with more intense ratings of emotional experience across five out of the six different instances. Our findings demonstrate that a variety of emotional experiences are associated with dynamic interactions of domain-general neural systems.     

Exploring the impact of dimensional comparisons in health contexts

“Did I exercise enough this week?” “Should I eat that last donut?” “Am I in good shape?” Due to the ambiguity and difficulty of answering such questions, people often use comparison-based information to contextualize their standing, inform self-evaluations, and guide behavior. For example, to ascertain whether they have exercised enough, people can make social comparisons to peers (e.g., “Have I exercised more than my friends?”) or temporal comparisons of the present to the past (e.g., “Have I exercised more this week than last week?”). While ample research has examined the relevance and impact of social and temporal comparisons in a range of health contexts (e.g., health behaviors, risk perceptions), the overarching goal of the present review was to explicate the potential relevance and impact of a third type of comparison standard—dimensional comparisons—in health contexts (with an emphasis on health behaviors like exercise). First, we discuss how social and temporal comparisons shape self-evaluations in both health and non-health contexts. Second, we provide an overview of research conducted on dimensional comparisons in non-health contexts and discuss how comparison sources shape self-evaluations and self-concept formation. Third, we explore the potential impact and relevance of dimensional comparisons on self-evaluations in health behavior contexts. Fourth, and finally, we highlight potential future directions and considerations for advancing our knowledge of the relevance and influence of dimensional comparisons in health contexts.     

Portrayals of women in prime-time network television: Some demographic characteristics

This paper examines demographic variables to create a partial picture of current portrayals of women on network television. All prime-time programs for all networks served as the information base. The findings were that few changes had been made in the portrayals of women from the 1970s to the 1980s in terms of observable demographic characteristics.     

The Effect of Evidential Impact on Perceptual Probabilistic Judgments

In a series of three behavioral experiments, we found a systematic distortion of probability judgments concerning elementary visual stimuli. Participants were briefly shown a set of figures that had two features (e.g., a geometric shape and a color) with two possible values each (e.g., triangle or circle and black or white). A figure was then drawn, and participants were informed about the value of one of its features (e.g., that the figure was a “circle”) and had to predict the value of the other feature (e.g., whether the figure was “black” or “white”). We repeated this procedure for various sets of figures and, by varying the statistical association between features in the sets, we manipulated the probability of a feature given the evidence of another (e.g., the posterior probability of hypothesis “black” given the evidence “circle”) as well as the support provided by a feature to another (e.g., the impact, or confirmation, of evidence “circle” on the hypothesis “black”). Results indicated that participants’ judgments were deeply affected by impact, although they only should have depended on the probability distributions over the features, and that the dissociation between evidential impact and posterior probability increased the number of errors. The implications of these findings for lower and higher level cognitive models are discussed.     

My Recency,Our Primacy: How Social Connection Influences Evaluations of Sequences

Individuals have many life experiences (e.g., work and vacations) that consist of a series of interconnected episodes (i.e., temporal sequences). Assessments of such experiences are integral to daily life in that they facilitate future planning and behaviors for individuals. Therefore, these experiences often culminate in evaluations of their global affect. Past work has shown that retrospective, affective evaluations of these sequences generally exhibit an “end effect,” whereby a sequence's end intensity—but not its start intensity—is disproportionately weighted. Yet, researchers have largely investigated experiences that occur alone. In contrast, many real‐world experiences vary in their extent of social connection to others (e.g., working in an office with others versus alone in a cubicle). The present work fills this gap by showing the moderating role of social connection on how episodes are weighted in global affective ratings. Five studies involving two autobiographical experiences spanning several days each (workweek and spring break) and two brief simulated experiences show that high social connection leads to greater (lesser) weighting of the first (last) episode. To our knowledge, we are the first to demonstrate that these effects persist across different forms of social connection (i.e., interpersonal interaction versus semantic priming tasks) and are supported regardless of whether social connection occurs at encoding or retrieval of an experience. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Why are dunkels sticky? Preschoolers infer functionality and intentional creation for artifact properties learned from generic language

Artifacts pose a potential learning problem for children because the mapping between their features and their functions is often not transparent. In solving this problem, children are likely to rely on a number of information sources (e.g., others’ actions, affordances). We argue that children’s sensitivity to nuances in the language used to describe artifacts is an important, but so far unacknowledged, piece of this puzzle. Specifically, we hypothesize that children are sensitive to whether an unfamiliar artifact’s features are highlighted using generic (e.g., “Dunkels are sticky”) or non-generic (e.g., “This dunkel is sticky”) language. Across two studies, older—but not younger—preschoolers who heard such features introduced via generic statements inferred that they are a functional part of the artifact’s design more often than children who heard the same features introduced via non-generic statements. The ability to pick up on this linguistic cue may expand considerably the amount of conceptual information about artifacts that children derive from conversations with adults.     

The Average Fuel‐Efficiency Fallacy: Overestimation of Average Fuel Efficiency and How It Can Lead to Biased Decisions

People falsely believe that equal increases in vehicles' fuel efficiency (e.g., miles per gallon (MPG)) will result in equal fuel savings. Whereas previous research on this “MPG illusion” has focused on people's biased choices of upgrading vehicle models, it has not examined a more common situation, namely, estimating a given vehicle's fuel efficiency based on the average of two efficiency values (e.g., in the city and on highways). In such situations, we find an additional bias in people's judgment and choice, the average fuel‐efficiency fallacy, in which people falsely believe that the combined fuel efficiency (e.g., of city and highway MPG) is a simple—instead of a harmonic—mean of the two values. Owing to the curvilinear relationship between fuel efficiency and fuel consumption, the combined fuel‐efficiency value would always be lower than the simple average, resulting in consistent overestimations of the actual fuel efficiency. In a series of studies, we demonstrate how this fallacy of overestimating combined fuel efficiency leads to suboptimal choices between vehicles. In addition, we find that the solution prescribed for the MPG illusion—using gallons per 100 miles—does reduce, but not eliminate, the average fuel‐efficiency fallacy, and that comprehension of the gallons per 100 miles measure is a precursory condition for this nudge to have any effect. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Buying Life Experiences for the “Right” Reasons: A Validation of the Motivations for Experiential Buying Scale

Although numerous studies have demonstrated the hedonic benefits of spending money on life experiences instead of material possessions, there has been no attempt to determine how different motivations for experiential consumption relate to psychological need satisfaction and well-being. Across five studies (N = 931), guided by self-determination theory, we developed a reliable and valid measure of motivation for experiential consumption—the Motivation for Experiential Buying Scale—to test these relations. Those who spend money on life experience for autonomous reasons (e.g., “because they are an integral part of my life”) report more autonomy, competence, relatedness, flourishing, and vitality; however, those who spend money on life experiences for controlled (e.g., “for the recognition I’ll get from others”) or amotivated reasons (e.g., “I don’t really know”) reported less autonomy, competence, and relatedness. These results demonstrated that the benefits of experiential consumption depend on why one buys life experiences.     

Toward an Ecological Theory of Rationality: Debunking the Hot Hand “Illusion”

This article explores the “hot hand illusion” from the perspective of ecological rationality. Monte Carlo simulations were used to test the sensitivity of typical tests for randomness to plausible constraints (e.g., Wald-Wolfowitz) on sequences of binary events (e.g., basketball shots). Most of the constraints were detected when sample sizes were large. However, when the range of improvement was limited to reflect natural performance bounds, these tests did not detect a success-dependent learning process. In addition, a series of experiments assessed people's ability to discriminate between random and constrained sequences of binary events. The result showed that in all cases human performance was better than chance, even for the constraints that were missed by the standard tests. The case is made that, as with perception, it is important to ground research on human cognition in the demands of adaptively responding to ecological constraints. In this context, it is suggested that a “bias” or “default” that assumes that nature is “structured” or “constrained” is a very rational approach for an adaptive system whose survival depends on assembling smart mechanisms to solve complex problems.     

Measuring Stereotypes of Female Politicians

One explanation for the dearth of women in elected office is that voters stereotype candidates based on their gender. Research in this vein often assumes that female candidates will be stereotyped similarly to women (e.g., as compassionate) and measures stereotypes as such. We question this assumption, proposing instead that female politicians constitute a subtype—a new stereotypical category with its own qualities—of the broader group of women. We compare the content of female politician stereotypes to other relevant comparison groups including politicians, male politicians, and female professionals. Using a classic methodology to determine stereotype content (Katz & Braly, 1933), we find that female politicians do not share the qualities that are ascribed to women (e.g., warm, empathetic). Our results show that female politicians seem to be “losing” on male stereotypical qualities while also not having any advantage on qualities typical of women. The content of female politician stereotypes is nebulous and lacks clarity in comparison to all other groups examined. We discuss implications for the future measurement of politician stereotypes.     

A prototype matching model of satisfaction in same‐sex friendships

The hypothesis that people experience greater friendship satisfaction when their friendship matches the prototype of intimacy interactions was tested. Consistent with this hypothesis, both women and men reported the greatest satisfaction when their “real‐world” friendship matched the prototype of intimacy interactions. This relation was even stronger when the friendship matched prototypical intimacy interaction patterns (e.g., self‐disclosure) than when it matched nonprototypical patterns (e.g., practical support). Thus, there is evidence that people rely on relational knowledge—in this case, complex knowledge of patterns of relating—when evaluating the quality of their friendships.     

The formation of novel social category conjunctions in working memory: A possible role for the episodic buffer?

Recent research (e.g., Hutter, Crisp, Humphreys, Waters, &; Moffit; Siebler) has confirmed that combining novel social categories involves two stages (e.g., Hampton; Hastie, Schroeder, &; Weber). Furthermore, it is also evident that following stage 1 (constituent additivity), the second stage in these models involves cognitively effortful complex reasoning. However, while current theory and research has addressed how category conjunctions are initially represented to some degree, it is not clear precisely where we first combine or bind existing social constituent categories. For example, how and where do we compose and temporarily store a coherent representation of an individual who shares membership of “female” and “blacksmith” categories? In this article, we consider how the revised multi-component model of working memory (Baddeley) can assist in resolving the representational limitations in the extant two-stage theoretical models. This is a new approach to understanding how novel conjunctions form new bound “composite” representations.     

The dimensional arrow: Agreement in directional mapping of dimensions among Mandarin Chinese- and English-speakers

We present evidence that English- and Mandarin-speakers agree about how to map dimensions (e.g., size and clarity) to vertical space and that they do so in a directional way. We first developed visual stimuli for four dimensions—size, clarity, complexity, and darkness—and in each case we varied the stimuli to express a range of the dimension (e.g., there were five total items expressing the range covering big, medium, and small). In our study, English- and Mandarin-speakers mapped these stimuli to an unlabelled vertical scale. Most people mapped dimensional endpoints in similar ways; using size as a standard, we found that the majority of participants mapped the clearest, most complex, and darkest items to the same end of the vertical scale as they mapped the biggest items. This indicates that all four dimensions have a weighted or unmarked end (i.e., all are directional or polar). The strong similarities in polarity across language groups contrasted with group differences on a lexical task, for which there was little cross-linguistic agreement about which comparative words to use to describe stimulus pairs (e.g., “bigger” vs. “smaller”). Thus, we found no evidence in this study that the perception of these dimensions is influenced by language.     

预测加工：走出两代认知科学的历史僵局

表征-计算观与具身行动观对认知的本质几乎做了截然相反的强调。近年来,预测加工理论的发展为统一两代认知科学提供了契机。预测加工是层级预测加工与主动预测加工这两大理论部件的合称,前一部件主要继承了第一代认知科学中的层级计算加工进路,后一部件则发扬了第二代认知科学中与行动有关的理论,这两大理论部件被视为同一个统一整合理论的两个不同方面。在当代,预测加工被认为有望成为未来认知科学的新范式。     

Reconsidering ‘spatial memory’ and the Morris water maze

The Morris water maze has been put forward in the philosophy of neuroscience as an example of an experimental arrangement that may be used to delineate the cognitive faculty of spatial memory (e.g., Craver and Darden, Theory and method in the neurosciences, University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, 2001; Craver, Explaining the brain: Mechanisms and the mosaic unity of neuroscience, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2007). However, in the experimental and review literature on the water maze throughout the history of its use, we encounter numerous responses to the question of “what” phenomenon it circumscribes ranging from cognitive functions (e.g., “spatial learning”, “spatial navigation”), to representational changes (e.g., “cognitive map formation”) to terms that appear to refer exclusively to observable changes in behavior (e.g., “water maze performance”). To date philosophical analyses of the water maze have not been directed at sorting out what phenomenon the device delineates nor the sources of the different answers to the question of what. I undertake both of these tasks in this paper. I begin with an analysis of Morris’s first published research study using the water maze and demonstrate that he emerged from it with an experimental learning paradigm that at best circumscribed a discrete set of observable changes in behavior. However, it delineated neither a discrete set of representational changes nor a discrete cognitive function. I cite this in combination with a reductionist-oriented research agenda in cellular and molecular neurobiology dating back to the 1980s as two sources of the lack of consistency across the history of the experimental and review literature as to what is under study in the water maze.     

RT distribution analysis of category congruence effects with masked primes

Macquarie University, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia In the number magnitude decision task (“Is the number bigger/smaller than 5?”), response to a target (e.g., 3) is faster following a masked prime congruent with the target (e.g., 1) than it is following an incongruent prime (e.g., 9). This category congruence effect has been reported to be “interference-dominant” relative to a neutral prime (e.g., the # sign, the number 5) on the basis of the analysis of mean response time (RT). Using RT distribution analysis as well as mean RTs, we identified two bases for this pattern. One relates to the choice of neutral baseline: The # prime, unlike the digit prime, does not factor in the cost of perceptual transition between the prime and target, and therefore underestimates facilitation and overestimates the interference effect. The second basis of the interference-dominant pattern is a disproportionate slowdown of congruent trials in the slow RT bins. Furthermore, this slowdown is greater for primes that had been used as targets than it is with “novel” primes that have not been responded to as targets. We interpret the results as suggesting that the category congruence effect has two components with different time courses—one based on stimulus-response mapping, and the other on semantic categorization.     

Can the Mind Command the Body?

People naturally intuit that an agent's ethereal thoughts can cause its body to move. Per intuitive physics; however, one body can only interact with another. Are people, then, covertly puzzled by the capacity of thoughts to command the body? Experiment 1 first confirms that thoughts (e.g., thinking about a cup) are indeed perceived as ethereal—as less detectible in the body (brain), and more likely to exist in the afterlife relative to matched percepts (e.g., seeing a cup). Experiments 2–5 show that thoughts are considered less likely to cause behavior than percepts (e.g., thinking of a cup vs. seeing one). Furthermore, mind–body causation is more remarkable when its bodily consequences are salient (e.g., moving an arm vs. brain activation). Finally, epistemic causes are remarkable only when they are ascribed to mental- (e.g., “thinking”) but not to physical states (“activation”). Together, these results suggest that mind–body interactions elicit a latent dualist dissonance.